Tao Te Ching

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.
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LAO TZU
TAO T E C HI NG
Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 1 2/7/19 12:12 PM

L AO TZ U
TAO TE
CHING
A Book about the Way
and the Power of the Way
An English Version by
Ursula K. Le Guin
with the collabor ation of
J. P. Seaton, Professor of Chinese,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
shambhala
Boulder
2019

Shambhala Publications, Inc.
4720 Walnut Street
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www.shambhala.com
© 1997 by Ursula K. Le Guin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic
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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
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For more information please visit www.shambhala.com.
Shambhala Publications is distributed worldwide by

Penguin Random House, Inc., and its subsidiaries.
The Library of Congress catalogues the original edition of this book as follows:
Lao-tzu.
[Tao te ching. English]
Lao Tzu: Tao te ching: a book about the way and the power of the way/
a new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin, with J. P. Seaton.
—1st ed.
p. cm.
isbn 978-1-57062-333-2 (hardcover)
isbn 978-1-61180-724-0
I. Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929– . II. Seaton, Jerome P.
III. Title.
bl 1900.l26e5 1997a 97-18942
299'.51482—dc21

FOR A. L. K. AND J. P. S.

CONTENTS
Introduction ix
lao tzu: tao te ching

Book One: Chapters 1–37 1
Book Two: Chapters 38–81 45
notes
Concerning This Version 99
Sources 101
Notes on Some Choices of Wording 105
The Two Texts of the Tao Te Ching 107
Notes on the Chapters 109

INTRODUCTION
The Tao Te Ching was probably written about twenty-

five hundred years ago, perhaps by a man called Lao
Tzu, who may have lived at about the same time as Con-
fucius. Nothing about it is certain except that it’s Chi-
nese, and very old, and speaks to people everywhere as if
it had been written yesterday.
The first Tao Te Ching I ever saw was the Paul Carus
edition of 1898, bound in yellow cloth stamped with
blue and red Chinese designs and characters. It was a
venerable object of mystery, which I soon investigated,
and found more fascinating inside than out. The book
was my father’s; he read in it often. Once I saw him mak-
ing notes from it and asked what he was doing. He said
he was marking which chapters he’d like to have read at
his funeral. We did read those chapters at his memorial
service.
I have the book, now ninety-eight years old and fur-
ther ornamented with red binding-tape to hold the back
on, and have marked which chapters I’d like to have read
at my funeral. In the Notes, I explain why I was so lucky
to discover Lao Tzu in that particular edition. Here I will
only say that I was lucky to discover him so young, so that
I could live with his book my whole life long.
ix

I also discuss other aspects of my version in the
Notes—the how of it. Here I want to state very briefly the
why of it.
The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse;
but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter
but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing
is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange
beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their
net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in
poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the
truth. We have that on good authority.
Scholarly translations of the Tao Te Ching as a manual
for rulers use a vocabulary that emphasizes the unique-
ness of the Taoist “sage,” his masculinity, his authority.
This language is perpetuated, and degraded, in most
popular versions. I wanted a Book of the Way accessible
to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps un-
male reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening
for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader
to see why people have loved the book for twenty-five
hundred years.
It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts,
funny, keen, kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous,
and inexhaustibly refreshing. Of all the deep springs, this
is the purest water. To me, it is also the deepest spring.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
Commentaries at the foot of some of the chapters are my own responses

to the text. They are idiosyncratic and unscholarly, and are to be ig-
nored if not found helpful. In the Notes at the end of the book are more
detailed considerations of some of the chapters, thanks to my sources
and guides, and remarks on how I arrived at my version.
x | introduction

Book One

TAOING
The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
1
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.
Heaven and earth

begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul

sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,

but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.
A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impos-

sible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in Borges’s story: if
you see it rightly, it contains everything.
tao te ching | 3

SOUL FOOD
2 Everybody on earth knowing

that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.
Everybody knowing
that goodness is good
makes wickedness.
For being and nonbeing

arise together;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.
4 | lao tzu

That’s why the wise soul
does without doing,
teaches without talking.
The things of this world

exist, they are;
you can’t refuse them.
To bear and not to own;

to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.
One of the things I read in this chapter is that values and beliefs are
not only culturally constructed but also part of the interplay of yin and
yang, the great reversals that maintain the living balance of the world.
To believe that our beliefs are permanent truths which encompass real-
ity is a sad arrogance. To let go of that belief is to find safety.
tao te ching | 5

HUSHING
3 Not praising the praiseworthy

keeps people uncompetitive.
Not prizing rare treasures

keeps people from stealing.
Not looking at the desirable

keeps the mind quiet.
So the wise soul

governing people
would empty their minds,
fill their bellies,
weaken their wishes,
strengthen their bones,
keep people unknowing,
unwanting,
keep the ones who do know
from doing anything.
When you do not-doing,

nothing’s out of order.
Over and over Lao Tzu says wei wu wei: Do not do. Doing not-doing.
To act without acting. Action by inaction. You do nothing yet it gets
done. . . .
It’s not a statement susceptible to logical interpretation, or even to
a syntactical translation into English; but it’s a concept that transforms
thought radically, that changes minds. The whole book is both an ex-
planation and a demonstration of it.
6 | lao tzu

SOURCELESS
The way is empty,
used, but not used up.
4
Deep, yes! ancestral
to the ten thousand things.
Blunting edge,
loosing bond,
dimming light,
the way is the dust of the way.
Quiet,
yes, and likely to endure.
Whose child? born
before the gods.
Everything Lao Tzu says is elusive. The temptation is to grasp at some-

thing tangible in the endlessly deceptive simplicity of the words. Even
some of his finest scholarly translators focus on positive ethical or po-
litical values in the text, as if those were what’s important in it. And
of course the religion called Taoism is full of gods, saints, miracles,
prayers, rules, methods for securing riches, power, longevity, and so
forth—all the stuff that Lao Tzu says leads us away from the Way.
In passages such as this one, I think it is the profound modesty of the
language that offers what so many people for so many centuries have
found in this book: a pure apprehension of the mystery of which we are
part.
tao te ching | 7

USEFUL EMPTINESS
5 Heaven and earth aren’t humane.

To them the ten thousand things
are straw dogs.
Wise souls aren’t humane.

To them the hundred families
are straw dogs.
Heaven and earth

act as a bellows:
Empty yet structured,

it moves, inexhaustibly giving.
The “inhumanity” of the wise soul doesn’t mean cruelty. Cruelty is

a human characteristic. Heaven and earth—that is, “Nature” and its
Way—are not humane, because they are not human. They are not
kind; they are not cruel: those are human attributes. You can only be
kind or cruel if you have, and cherish, a self. You can’t even be indiffer-
ent if you aren’t different. Altruism is the other side of egoism. Follow-
ers of the Way, like the forces of nature, act selflessly.
8 | lao tzu

WHAT IS COMPLETE
The valley spirit never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.
6
The mystery,
the Door of the Woman,
is the root
of earth and heaven.
Forever this endures, forever.

And all its uses are easy.
tao te ching | 9

DIM BRIGHTNESS
7 Heaven will last,

earth will endure.
How can they last so long?
They don’t exist for themselves
and so can go on and on.
So wise souls
leaving self behind
move forward,
and setting self aside
stay centered.
Why let the self go?
To keep what the soul needs.
10 | lao tzu

EASY BY NATURE
True goodness
is like water.
8
Water’s good
for everything.
It doesn’t compete.
It goes right
to the low loathsome places,
and so finds the way.
For a house,
the good thing is level ground.
In thinking,
depth is good.
The good of giving is magnanimity;
of speaking, honesty;
of government, order.
The good of work is skill,
and of action, timing.
No competition,
so no blame.
A clear stream of water runs through this book, from poem to poem,
wearing down the indestructible, finding the way around everything
that obstructs the way. Good drinking water.
tao te ching | 11

BEING QUIET
9 Brim-fill the bowl,

it’ll spill over.
Keep sharpening the blade,
you’ll soon blunt it.
Nobody can protect

a house full of gold and jade.
Wealth, status, pride,

are their own ruin.
To do good, work well, and lie low
is the way of the blessing.
12 | lao tzu

TECHNIQUES
Can you keep your soul in its body,
hold fast to the one,
1o
and so learn to be whole?
Can you center your energy,
be soft, tender,
and so learn to be a baby?
Can you keep the deep water still and clear,

so it reflects without blurring?
Can you love people and run things,
and do so by not doing?
Opening, closing the Gate of Heaven,

can you be like a bird with her nestlings?
Piercing bright through the cosmos,
can you know by not knowing?
To give birth, to nourish,

to bear and not to own,
to act and not lay claim,
to lead and not to rule:
this is mysterious power.
Most of the scholars think this chapter is about meditation, its tech-
niques and fulfillments. The language is profoundly mystical, the im-
ages are charged, rich in implications.
The last verse turns up in nearly the same words in other chapters;
there are several such “refrains” throughout the book, identical or simi-
lar lines repeated once or twice or three times.
tao te ching | 13

THE USES OF NOT
11 Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn’t
is where it’s useful.
Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not
is where it’s useful.
Cut doors and windows

to make a room.
Where the room isn’t,
there’s room for you.
So the profit in what is

is in the use of what isn’t.
One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He’s explaining
a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counterintuitive truths
that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the
universe. He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about
pots.
14 | lao tzu

NOT WANTING
The five colors
blind our eyes.
12
The five notes
deafen our ears.
The five flavors
dull our taste.
Racing, chasing, hunting,

drives people crazy.
Trying to get rich
ties people in knots.
So the wise soul

watches with the inner
not the outward eye,
letting that go,
keeping this.
tao te ching | 15

SHAMELESS
13 To be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer.
What does that mean,

to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear?
Favor debases:
we fear to lose it,
fear to win it.
So to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.
What does that mean,

to take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer?
I suffer because I’m a body;
if I weren’t a body,
how could I suffer?
16 | lao tzu

So people who set their bodily good
before the public good
could be entrusted with the commonwealth,
and people who treated the body politic
as gently as their own body
would be worthy to govern the commonwealth.
Lao Tzu, a mystic, demystifies political power.

Autocracy and oligarchy foster the beliefs that power is gained magi-
cally and retained by sacrifice, and that powerful people are genuinely
superior to the powerless.
Lao Tzu does not see political power as magic. He sees right-
ful power as earned and wrongful power as usurped. He does not
see power as virtue, but as the result of virtue. The democracies are
founded on that view.
He sees sacrifice of self or others as a corruption of power, and power
as available to anybody who follows the Way. This is a radically subver-
sive attitude. No wonder anarchists and Taoists make good friends.
tao te ching | 17

CELEBRATING MYSTERY
14 Look at it: nothing to see.

Call it colorless.
Listen to it: nothing to hear.
Call it soundless.
Reach for it: nothing to hold.
Call it intangible.
Triply undifferentiated,
it merges into oneness,
not bright above,
not dark below.
Never, oh! never

can it be named.
It reverts, it returns
to unbeing.
Call it the form of the unformed,
the image of no image.
Call it unthinkable thought.

Face it: no face.
Follow it: no end.
Holding fast to the old Way,

we can live in the present.
Mindful of the ancient beginnings,
we hold the thread of the Tao.
18 | lao tzu

PEOPLE OF POWER
Once upon a time
people who knew the Way
15
were subtle, spiritual, mysterious, penetrating,
unfathomable.
Since they’re inexplicable

I can only say what they seemed like:
Cautious, oh yes, as if wading through a winter
river.
Alert, as if afraid of the neighbors.
Polite and quiet, like houseguests.
Elusive, like melting ice.
Blank, like uncut wood.
Empty, like valleys.
Mysterious, oh yes, they were like troubled water.
Who can by stillness, little by little

make what is troubled grow clear?
Who can by movement, little by little
make what is still grow quick?
To follow the Way
is not to need fulfillment.
Unfulfilled, one may live on
needing no renewal.
In the first stanza we see the followers of the Way in ancient times or
illo tempore, remote and inaccessible; but the second stanza brings
them close and alive in a series of marvelous similes. (I am particularly
fond of the polite and quiet houseguests.) The images of the valley and
of uncut or uncarved wood will recur again and again.
tao te ching | 19

RETURNING TO THE ROOT
16 Be completely empty.
Be perfectly serene.
The ten thousand things arise together;
in their arising is their return.
Now they flower,
and flowering
sink homeward,
returning to the root.
The return to the root
is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be,
to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.
Without it, ruin, disorder.
To know what endures
is to be openhearted,
magnanimous,
regal,
blessed,
following the Tao,
the way that endures forever.
The body comes to its ending,
but there is nothing to fear.
To those who will not admit morality without a deity to validate it, or
spirituality of which man is not the measure, the firmness of Lao Tzu’s
morality and the sweetness of his spiritual counsel must seem incom-
prehensible, or illegitimate, or very troubling indeed.
20 | lao tzu

ACTING SIMPLY
True leaders
are hardly known to their followers.
17
Next after them are the leaders
the people know and admire;
after them, those they fear;
after them, those they despise.
To give no trust
is to get no trust.
When the work’s done right,

with no fuss or boasting,
ordinary people say,
Oh, we did it.
This invisible leader, who gets things done in such a way that people
think they did it all themselves, isn’t one who manipulates others from
behind the scenes; just the opposite. Again, it’s a matter of “doing
without doing”: uncompetitive, unworried, trustful accomplishment,
power that is not force. An example or analogy might be a very good
teacher, or the truest voice in a group of singers.
tao te ching | 21

SECOND BESTS
18 In the degradation of the great way

come benevolence and righteousness.
With the exaltation of learning and prudence
comes immense hypocrisy.
The disordered family
is full of dutiful children and parents.
The disordered society
is full of loyal patriots.
22 | lao tzu

RAW SILK AND UNCUT WOOD
Stop being holy, forget being prudent,
it’ll be a hundred times better for everyone.
19
Stop being altruistic, forget being righteous,
people will remember what family feeling is.
Stop planning, forget making a profit,
there won’t be any thieves and robbers.
But even these three rules

needn’t be followed; what works reliably
is to know the raw silk,
hold the uncut wood.
Need little,
want less.
Forget the rules.
Be untroubled.
This chapter and the two before it may be read as a single movement of
thought.
“Raw silk” and “uncut wood” are images traditionally associated
with the characters su (simple, plain) and p’u (natural, honest).
tao te ching | 23

BEING DIFFERENT
2o How much difference between yes and no?

What difference between good and bad?
What the people fear

must be feared.
O desolation!
Not yet, not yet has it reached its limit!
Everybody’s cheerful,
cheerful as if at a party,
or climbing a tower in springtime.
And here I sit unmoved,
clueless, like a child,
a baby too young to smile.
Forlorn, forlorn.
Like a homeless person.
Most people have plenty.
I’m the one that’s poor,
a fool right through.
24 | lao tzu

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Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.

indd 2 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 1 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 3 2/7/19 12:12 PM

© 1997 by Ursula K. Le Guin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

Printed in the United States of America

oThis edition is printed on acid-free paper that meets

Shambhala Publications is distributed worldwide by

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 4 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 5 2/7/19 12:12 PM

lao tzu: tao te ching

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 7 2/7/19 12:12 PM

The Tao Te Ching was probably written about twenty-

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 9 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Commentaries at the foot of some of the chapters are my own responses

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 10 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 1 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Heaven and earth

So the unwanting soul

Two things, one origin,

A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impos-

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 3 2/7/19 12:12 PM

2 Everybody on earth knowing

For being and nonbeing

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 4 2/7/19 12:12 PM

The things of this world

To bear and not to own;

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 5 2/7/19 12:12 PM

3 Not praising the praiseworthy

Not prizing rare treasures

Not looking at the desirable

So the wise soul

When you do not-doing,

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 6 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Everything Lao Tzu says is elusive. The temptation is to grasp at some-

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 7 2/7/19 12:12 PM

5 Heaven and earth aren’t humane.

Wise souls aren’t humane.

Heaven and earth

Empty yet structured,

The “inhumanity” of the wise soul doesn’t mean cruelty. Cruelty is

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 8 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Forever this endures, forever.

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 9 2/7/19 12:12 PM

7 Heaven will last,

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 10 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 11 2/7/19 12:12 PM

9 Brim-fill the bowl,

Nobody can protect

Wealth, status, pride,

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 12 2/7/19 12:12 PM

Can you keep the deep water still and clear,

Opening, closing the Gate of Heaven,

To give birth, to nourish,

Lao Tzu_Tao Te Ching.indd 13 2/7/19 12:12 PM